Hazel Freeman recalls her first flat in Liverpool

Resource Type: Audio | Posted on 18th July 2011 by Liam Physick

Hazel Freeman remembers her first flat in Liverpool, how she and her flatmates had to go outdoors to get to bed, how they slept on iron beds, how they had to cope with vermin, and how they struggled to keep up with the rent!

Interviewee: Hazel Freeman

Interviewee Gender: Female

Date of Interview: 19th February 2011

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Interview Transcript

Jenny: OK. Do you remember, ever . . . I mean, you came to the station the other day, and I wondered if that sparked any earlier memories from . . .

Hazel: (emphatically) Not really, no, I mean, I lived in Liverpool myself for . . . two years, Brampton Avenue (Jenny laughs), in a flat though, a load of, you know, real great fun! So, I mean, I knew Liverpool like the back of my hand . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . so I would have been in and out, I probably did go in and out of Edge Hill quite a lot . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . but I don’t actually, you know, remember it . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . as such, “That was Edge Hill and that was this and that was this” . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . . you know.

Jenny: So what was it like, the first flat in Liverpool, and . . . ?

Hazel: Oh, it was great fun . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . I mean, it was dead cheap, it was not like flats, steel flats of today . . .

Jenny: No.

Hazel: . . . we’d . . . it was a whole block, you know, a whole old house that had been converted, in a very weird way, into student accommodation. We had a lounge, but to go bed, you’d have to go out of the front door, up some stairs and . . .

Jenny: . . . back in?

Hazel: . . . back (Jenny laughs) . . . back in . . . and three of us shared a room with, sort of, iron, they were iron beds, like in a kind of . . .

Jenny: . . . dorm?

Hazel: Yeah. There was no luxury but we thought it was wonderful.

Jenny: Yeah. Freedom at least.

Hazel: We had mice, we had rats (Jenny laughs), we had burglars . . . (bursts out laughing herself)

Jenny: Aw!

Hazel: But it was the same as everybody else . . .

Jenny: Yeah.

Hazel: . . . we thought it was just wonderful. The man came to collect the rent every week . . .

Hazel: It was a weekly thing, and I very much remember our . . . the man who collected our rent . . . doesn’t have to do this but he had this big badge on him, saying “Jesus Saves” (Jenny laughs), which we always used to find terribly amusing (both laugh), saying that it’s as he’s come to save, cos we were always trying to say, “Can we pay so much” . . .

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Edge Hill Station is the oldest passenger railway station in the World. Some say when Stephenson's Rocket left Edge Hill for Manchester on the 15th September 1830 it marked the beginning of the modern world.